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Early Christianity & Apostasy |
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Apostasy Authority: and Priesthood
Doctrinal shift:
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Critics make some or all of the following attacks on LDS doctrine regarding "hell":
Latter-day Saint doctrine and scripture does use the term "hell" in a few different senses. This does not mean, however, that members are unclear about their doctrine, or that the particular use of the term "hell" cannot be determined by context.
The Encyclopedia of Mormonism notes, in part:
This claim is false. LDS scripture repeatedly refers to hell, as does the Bible, and as demonstrated above, the LDS have a clear use of hell in their theology.
Some critics claim that the LDS doctrine of hell violates the Book of Mormon and the Bible, because the Church does not teach a hell of endless duration. For example, Jerald and Sandra Tanner wrote:
All others, who are not classed as sons of perdition, will be "redeemed in the due time of the Lord"; that is, they will all be saved. The MEANEST SINNER will find some place in the heavenly realm...
In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, THERE IS NO HELL. ALL will find a measure of salvation, ... The gospel of Jesus Christ has NO HELL in the old proverbial sense. (Joseph Smith--Seeker After Truth, Salt Lake City, 1951, pp. 177-178).
The Apostle John A. Widtsoe seemed to be teaching the very thing that the Book of Mormon condemned![3]
This quotation, however, does not fairly represent either Elder Widtsoe's views or the LDS doctrine he is explaining.
Note how Elder Widtsoe is trying to explain the differences between the sectarian vision of hell and the LDS one. He nowhere claims that sinners get a 'free ride' into heaven, and even opines that LDS understanding of punishment may be worse, in some ways. Note too the author's tendency to distort and obscure meaning through ALL CAPS and emphasis.
To illustrate the definite break with the Christianity of the day, [consider a doctrine] foreign to the truth of the gospel but taught almost vehemently over centuries by the priests of an apostate Christianity...that sinners will be sent to hell, there to remain in torture throughout eternity....In Joseph's day preachers still taught the proverbial hell of everlasting torture. In the text books of his day, in many nations, were pictures of devils with pitchforks pushing sinners into the flames of hells, there to suffer the agony of being burned, but never consumed. With one hand the preacher offered a fragment of God's love, and with the other, the torment of an unutterable never-ending hell provided by an angry, unforgiving God. Under such a cruel doctrine men would be frightened, so it was hoped, into a righteous manner of living. How men could devise so horrible a future for any one of God's children is a striking evidence of the apostasy from the simple loving gospel of Jesus Christ...the breaking of any law brings punishment which however may be paid for through repentance. If repentance does not follow sin, full punishment inevitably follows......In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there is no hell. All will find a measure of salvation; all must pay for any infringement of the law; but the payment will be as the Lord may decide. There is graded salvation. This may be a more terrible punishment: to feel that because of sin a man is here, when by a correct life, he might be higher. The gospel of Jesus Christ has no hell in the old proverbial sense.[4]
LDS scripture says of those in hell that "their torment is as a lake of fire and brimstone" (2 Nephi 9꞉16, italics added). Thus, LDS scripture sees the burning of hell as metaphorical. This does not, however, mean that LDS doctrine devalues or downplays the suffering of hell. The resurrected Christ told Joseph Smith that:
See #3, above.
LDS doctrine anticipates that not all people will have a full and complete chance to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ before their death. Thus, in LDS doctrine those who have not yet accepted Christ may do so after death, but before the resurrection.
It is true that the Church believes that there is more to the final judgment than just a heaven/hell split. This difference derives in part from changes made to Christian doctrine in the first centuries after the death of the apostles.
For a discussion on changes from the early Christian conception of sin, death, hell, and salvation, see:
Critics manage to mangle the Christian view of Hell as badly as they do with the correct, authentic and original Christian view of Heaven.
They don't start off well, confusing both the New Testament concepts of Hell in the sense of "hades" or "sheol" (spirit prison) and "gehenna" (everlasting burning)-terms with completely different meanings-and using the terms interchangeably, blissfully ignorant of the distinctions LDS (and the Bible, and most other Christians) make between the two. While it is probably true that, as they say, "...many [Latter-day Saints] find the [Biblicist] view of hell (eternal punishment with no second chances) to be both unfair and offensive," what offends us even more is that such an oversimplification is not Christian doctrine. Oddly enough, they are not even representing normative Protestant doctrine when they fail to make a difference between hades/sheol and gehenna.
As Innes explains,
"Hell" in the AV normally renders one of the three words, Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna.
Sheol...is the word [that] is used in the Old Testament for the place of the dead. In general, we may say that it is the state of death pictured in visible terms....In the later Jewish literature we meet with the idea of divisions within Sheol for the wicked and the righteous, in which each experiences a foretaste of his final destiny (Enoch xxii. 1-14). This idea appears to underlie the imagery of the parable of Dives and Lazarus in the New Testament.[5]:518
"Hades" is the Greek term used to translate the Hebrew word "sheol" in the New Testament. Innes again:
In the LXX [6] it almost always renders sheol, and in the New Testament the Pesh.[7] renders it by shyul. It is used in connection with the death of Christ in Acts ii. 27, 31, which quotes Ps. xvi. 10. In Mt. xvi. 18 Christ says that the gates of Hades (cf. Is. xxxviii. 10; Pss. ix. 13, cvii. 18) shall not prevail against His Church. As the gates of a city are essential to its power, the meaning here is probably the power of death.[5]:518
With respect to Gehenna, Innes goes on to explain,
In later Jewish writings Gehenna came to have the sense of the place of punishment for sinners (Assumption of Moses x.10; 2 Esdras vii.36) The rabbinic literature contains various opinions as to who would suffer eternal punishment. The ideas were widespread that the sufferings of some would be terminated by annihilation, or that the fires of Gehenna were in some cases purgatorial. But those who held these doctrines also taught the reality of eternal punishment for certain classes of sinners...The teaching of the New Testament endorses this belief.[5]:518
In the New Testament, the Hebrew word is usually transliterated as ge'enna, but on occasion the general (i.e., non-Judaeo-Christian) Greek word Tartarus is also used. "Gehenna" comes from the imagery of a continuously smoldering garbage pit in the Valley of Hinnom in New Testament Jerusalem. Tartarus is a classical Greek word for the son of the god Chaos but came to mean that part of the afterworld where the wicked suffered for their sins. So we have two pairs of Greek/Hebrew words used in the New Testament: Sheol/Hades for the afterworld in general, and Gehenna/Tartarus for the place of eternal punishment. But as noted, Tartarus is a rarely used word in the New Testament (originally written, of course, in Greek).
Given such a fundamental and critical failure to distinguish between very clearly different concepts in the New Testament, precious little of the authors' commentary on the Gospel's beliefs regarding Outer Darkness, Perdition, Spirit Prison and the Telestial Kingdom makes any sense whatsoever and the critic of their work wonders where to even begin to approach it. A basic primer in Christianity (let alone its restored form) is needed by the authors.
Notes
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